


Mirage

by Molly



Category: NSYNC
Genre: M/M, Popslash - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-17
Updated: 2008-09-17
Packaged: 2017-10-01 23:51:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly/pseuds/Molly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>This is not a romance with the road.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirage

  
 

   


_like a million little doorways_

  
 

   


The first time his feet started to itch and his eyes started to burn from the monotony of staring at his own furniture, he took a walk around the block. Five miles later, in a neighborhood he'd never even seen before, he called a cab on his cell and sat silently in the back while the driver took him to his house. Pulling into the drive, the cabbie said _hey, you were in that group, with that guy, Justin. Right? _ and Chris looked back at him in the rearview mirror, blank. He needed water and a shower and a bed, he needed his knees to stop screaming profanities at the rest of him. He said, _I'm-Chris_, reflex kicking the words up from his chest, bypassing his brain completely. He signed an autograph for a ten-year-old named Josie (_youwereherfavorite_) and watched his hand move across the paper, hold the pen, draw the words. He smiled blankly at her picture, looked away. He forgot her name in the driveway, lost her face at the door, only vaguely recalled the cab once he got inside.

He slept for two days, tossed and turned and dreamed.

The second time, he took his car. He was gone four hours. He didn't remember turning back, but in the end it was dark and the engine clicked softly toward cool and the moon was bouncing silver off the concrete of his own driveway. He thought about sleeping in the car; it was warm, it was comfortable, he wouldn't have to move. But he wasn't that crazy yet, or at least he didn't want to be, so he pulled the keys from the ignition and dragged himself up to his own front door.

He made it to the living room, to his incredibly uncomfortable couch, and fell asleep, so far asleep he didn't dream. He woke up feeling wrung out, heavy, hung over. The last memory that he knew was real was a week ago at the airport, and he couldn't see Justin's eyes. Just that stupid hat and the gold chain and the really ugly shirt.

His head throbbed, and his mouth felt hot and dry. He didn't know where he'd been or why he was on the couch or how long he'd slept. The sun flared through the windows and his eyes watered from the strength of it. Bright, brilliant, beautiful summer day.

He threw up in the bathroom; not much, because he hadn't been eating. He'd been driving instead of eating, filling himself up with something else. He brushed his teeth, drank handfuls of water from the tap and then stripped down and stepped into the shower. The spray cut into him like flying glass, and he turned his face up to meet it, mouth open. The water was warm and faintly sweet.

The third time. He came out of the shower, toweled off, and dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. He pulled on sneakers, ran a comb through his hair, and grabbed his keys. In the driveway he called Melinda and asked her to have his mail forwarded to Joey. At the outskirts of town he called his mother and said he'd be out of town for a little while, not to worry, he loved her and the girls. At a Chevron station, while filling up his tank with premium unleaded, he called Joey and told his voicemail he was fine, not to look for him, not to call.

Out on the highway, he rolled down his window and threw his cell phone as far as he could. It shattered to pieces on the shoulder, another shimmer of wasted glass and metal at the side of the road.

  
   


* * *

  
   


The third time, he didn't turn back.

  
   


* * *

  
   


_Lance,_

Remember that time in New Orleans when we all wanted to go to the French Quarter and Justin wouldn't go because it was pouring and he didn't want to get his hair wet? You gave him that bandana thing and he didn't take it off for a year? He still has it. Swear to God. Lynn found it a few weeks ago, back of his bottom drawer.

Fucking kid. Never threw away a thing in his whole fucking life.

\-- Chris

  
   


* * *

  
   


_don't hang on_

  
 

   


He drove for a day and most of a night.

The air smelled like magnolia and honeysuckle when he passed through Mississippi, magnolia and honeysuckle and pine. He went through at midnight, one of the only cars on the road. He kept his high beams on and didn't see anything but trees and exits and the distant blue glow of a Chevron sign in some small nothing of a town that didn't even reflect off the clouds. Just before he crossed over into Louisiana, rain started falling in driving, blinding sheets that slowed his progress to a crawl. His windshield wipers were useless and his headlights showed him nothing.

He pulled over onto the shoulder, far enough off the highway to be safe, and flicked his hazards on to wait it out. He turned on the radio to pass the time. Reception cut in and out, and he couldn't make out the words at first, but the beat was unmistakable and Chris laughed. Threw his head back against the headrest and laughed, and tapped his feet, and hummed along to _Like I Love You_ because he'd never really bothered to learn the words.

The rain didn't let up. The song changed, and Chris laughed again, pressed his forehead against the steering wheel, shaking. _Cry Me a River, Rock Your Body, Senorita. Pop, Girlfriend, Gone. _ All their songs were Justin's songs now, even the ones he never sang alone. _Celebrity, Selfish, Something Like You. _ The DJ came on with hyped-up hip-hop lingo so thick it was barely English, _kick it wit' da latest joint from da All-Nite All-Star Request Tribute to the Late, the Great, the Timba-Timba-Timbalake, Mr. JT! _ Chris flicked the radio off before they could wrap with _God Must Have Spent a Little More Time_ on Justin.

Jive slowed it down and remixed it for the funeral, all quiet and serene -- instrumental, because not even the label execs were stupid enough to ask them to sing (and _'cuz why fuck up a perfectly crappy song? _ Joey said, but they were all drunk by then and nobody but Chris was listening.) They'd played other stuff when they got together alone. Eminem, U2. Madonna, Stevie Wonder, Al Green. Janet. MJ -- _Thriller_, because after half a bottle of tequila on an empty stomach, Chris got a little inspired. Lance laughed so hard he spilled a fresh bottle of vodka down the front of his shirt, JC did the dance, and Chris and Joey sang along. Just the four of them, five if you counted Justin's bobblehead, a Quiet Room with no tour and no venue.

Chris looked out the window, the smile on his face feeling weird and plastic, but kind of good. Rain slid down the glass like it was poured from a bucket and Chris tapped his fingers against his knee, keeping time with the patter on the roof and humming a little to himself.

_da-do ron ron ron, da-do ron ron.... _

  
   


* * *

  
   


_a highway out of yesterday_

  
 

   


He hit Houston at rush hour, and took the 610 loop to avoid the worst of the evening traffic. It was still slow, a crawl in a couple of places, but he made it back out to I-10 West before the sun even started to think about setting. The interstate there was lined with hotels and bars and variations on the Denny's theme, used car dealerships and Presbyterian churches squatting meek and embarrassed behind empty parking lots. Chris let it all feed into him, the grime and the air that smelled like exhaust and the shoddy, half-hearted construction of the endless strip malls. Above it all the sky was faded gold and the horizon had gone pink and hazy. Against all expectation, the world kept turning whether Justin lived in it or not.

When the buildings receded and the billboards vanished and the daytrippers thinned themselves out of the westward traffic, Chris pulled over to the side of the highway. He set the parking brake and turned off the ignition. Cars flashed past at seventy-five, eighty miles per hour, faster than Chris could have seen them if he'd been looking. He listened to their engines roar, there and gone, there and gone, and he gripped the steering wheel and lowered his forehead to rest on his knuckles.

He cried. His nose dripped and ran and his face heated up and his shoulders shook; he pulled in wet, half-drowned breaths and barked them out from the bottom of his lungs, painful hacking sobs like he was bringing something up. It felt like that, like he'd swallowed something vile and he had to get rid of it before it poisoned him, took him over. Hot, slick tears poured over his cheeks, his mouth, until all he could taste was salt and his eyes burned hot and dry and itched in their sockets. His throat felt ruined, useless; he didn't think he could talk even if he'd had anything to say. He said, "Fuck," and winced at the ache of it, the sound of it whispery and broken in his ears. He said it again to see if it got better. It didn't.

There was a six pack of water bottles in the back seat; he fished around behind the passenger seat until he found it, freed one, and tipped it back into his mouth. He let the water run in, and over his lips, and over his eyes a little; it stung but it was fresh and clean. He drank the rest, threw the plastic bottle behind him, and opened up another. When he had it open, he started the car, released the break, and eased back out onto the highway, steering one-handed.

His throat hurt all the way to El Paso. It took three days to get there, with stops at strange, dust-covered interstate hotels that poked up out of the ground like fingers pointing angrily at the endless sky. The clerks seemed surprised and not entirely thrilled by the prospect of customers. He didn't take any great pains to disguise himself, but nobody seemed to care, or even know, who he was.

He didn't mind. It was something they had in common.

  
   


* * *

  
   


_I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell_

  
 

   


There was a Taco Bell on the outskirts of town, and he stopped for a Dr. Pepper and a burrito. Nobody in the entire store spoke English as a first language, and he was sure that had to violate some kind of labor law. They forgot to leave the red sauce off his burrito, but they'd forgotten so many times in so many different cities that he was used to it. The consistency of it all was actually kind of comforting.

He pushed through the door and into the twilight, muggy air wrapping around him like a warm, wet blanket. He could hear cars racing past on the interstate. There was a little wind, not enough to make a difference, just enough to make him want more of it. He opened the driver's side door and sat down and turned to put the bag in the passenger's seat. When he turned his arm caught the drink holder and his Dr. Pepper tipped to the side and spilled all over the passenger side floorboard.

There was a map on the floorboard, wet and sticky now. It was folded to show California, and Bakersfield was circled in dark blue pen, over and over. Off to the right, in the same blue pen, it said _Everybody's got to be somewhere. _ The word _somewhere_ was underlined twice and an arrow swung around from the period to point at Bakersfield, in case there was any confusion. It was in his own handwriting.

He sat quietly while night came on, doing nothing. He didn't eat his burrito. The soda seeped down into the rug and dried. He thought about calling his mother. She'd be worried by now, no matter what Melinda and Joey told her. Chris held up a hand in front of his face, and his fingers shook so hard he had to clench his hand into a fist to make it stop. He thought she was probably right to be worried. Melinda and Joey didn't know shit.

He didn't call her, or anybody else. He didn't know why he was afraid, just that he was. Just that the blue words filled him with a gut-twisting dread like the darkness inside the shadows in a dark room. He felt light-headed, and realized he wasn't breathing.

He breathed. He breathed on purpose, and there was a rhythm to it, and the rhythm helped. His hands stopped shaking and his heart slowed down and he felt tired, down to the center of his bones. His eyelids drooped and his face sagged and his head was heavy, so heavy. He leaned it on the steering wheel and thought, _just for a second, I'll just rest for a second._

He slept four hours in the parking lot of a Taco Bell. When he woke up and looked at the map, the words looked back at him, surreal and inscrutable, meaning more than they said.

He felt blank inside, wiped clean. Chris started the car and headed back to the interstate. Cracks in the road thudded out a steady heartbeat under the wheels, miles spilling out behind him. He drove west.

_Everybody's got to be somewhere. _

  
   


* * *

  
   


_the next voice you hear_

  
 

   


I-10 echoed. Not just on the road, but in the hotels alongside, in the truck stops and the mini-marts, everywhere. Even when there were people they were transitory, on their way from someplace east to someplace west. He tried to imagine the clerks and cashiers as real people, people with lives and families, but there were no towns for miles, and he didn't know where they came from or where they went after. Easier to think of them as transient, too, and the face he was seeing now he might see again, ten, twenty, fifty miles further on.

The grassy divide between wide strips of concrete separated his world from its mirror image, the same hotels and the same truck stops with different people traveling in the opposite direction. Climbing into his car with a raspberry slurpee in one hand and a hot dog in the other, Chris had an odd sensation of doubling and thought if he could just see the into the Chevron on the other side he'd see a different version of himself. Same face, same clothes, same keys. Heading home.

He heard it for the first time in the empty stretch between the thriving metropolis of Daviston (pop. 652 and growing!) and a wide spot in the road optimistically labeled "Oasis". Just a buzz, a weird vibration, when the radio started to go fuzzy. It didn't cut in and out, it didn't crackle; it just faded, slow and steady, into white noise. Light was leaching out of the sky overhead and the air was sweet and warm. Chris had the driver's side window down, and he didn't know how long he'd been listening to nothing and the wind when he heard something else, buried in the static.

He rolled up the window and reached out to hit the tuner, then didn't. He hit the volume instead, dialing it up to a thick buzz pouring out of every speaker. He knew he'd heard something, and then after a few seconds he thought he'd heard something. Just as he became sure he hadn't heard anything at all, he heard it again.

_...ris..._

Chris...?

His fingers clenched tight around the steering wheel, dark hair standing out like spikes against the white white white of his knuckles, the backs of his hands. He didn't know what to do. He kept driving, thinking he should say something with one part of his mind and thinking _don't talk back to the radio, you stupid fuck_ with another. He didn't, but he left the dial where it was, left the window up, left the volume high.

He didn't hear it again that day, but he never stopped listening. He never changed the station.

  
   


* * *

  
   


_Lance,_

Saw you guys on MTV at the last hotel. You all looked like crack  
whores. Here, I'm enclosing a chill pill. (just kidding. ha ha! fucking with your head is my anti-drug.)

I miss you idiots, fuck if I know why, and I know I'm being a dick. Seriously, don't have an aneurysm. Don't let JC freak out too much. I'm okay.

\--CK

PS. turns out i really am the kra-Z-1.

  
   


* * *

  
   


_I thought we'd show that friendship_

could be stronger than the crossroads devil

  
 

   


He saw Justin in Arizona.

Just for a moment. Just one slice of one impossible second, walking by the side of the road, thumb out for a ride. No other cars for miles, it was that part of the highway. He'd passed a gas station an hour ago and a sign that read _Last Gas 50 Miles_, but somebody had painted in three extra zeros. Chris drove through land bleached and dry and empty as a post-apocalyptic nightmare; he had more faith in the graffiti.

He didn't register the guy until he was almost past him: tall, denim up one side and down the other, boots the same color as the dust beneath them. Something then, _click_, something about the shape of the back of his head and Chris turned, fuck the mirrors, he threw his hand over the back of the passenger seat and twisted and stared out of the back window and

Justin. Blue eyes, idiot smile, fucking ugly-ass goatee. _Justin. _

He hit the brakes hard, swerved, finally looked at the road in front of him and found himself in the wrong lane. The car lurched to a crazy halt, laying down rubber behind, and Chris threw it into park and left it running and dove out the door, heart beating so fast in his ears he couldn't tell one rush from another. He could smell him, his aftershave, his sweat, the taste of him was in Chris's mouth where it had never been before and it was like waking up from a vicious dream, eyes and senses wide open. He was out of the car, behind it, before he knew he was moving; the wind was gritty in his eyes and in his teeth, a steady strong wind blowing west, straight into him.

The road was empty. Nothing but concrete and dust.

He went back to the car. He leaned against it, slid down the side and propped himself up against the rear tire. He pulled his knees in, put his head down between them, covered his head with his hands. The breeze kept blowing over him, long cool breath, and there was going to be dirt in his hair, his ears, under his jacket, ground into his skin. The sun sank lower in the sky and no cars came to swerve around him. It was that part of the highway.

Later, Chris stood up and brushed himself off. He took off his jacket and threw it in the back seat, then peeled off his t-shirt and shook it out before putting it back on. He drank a bottle of water standing in the middle of the road.

When it was gone he threw the empty into the back seat, climbed back in his car, and kept driving.

  
   


* * *

  
   


_and you don't know the terrain_

  
 

   


The hotel picked him, a giant pink monstrosity with turquoise trim and a sign that read "Sleep with us, we'll make it worth your while!" under a promise of a continental breakfast and free HBO. Also it was the only hotel he'd seen in fifty miles, and dark was coming on. Night had a way of showing up fast in the valleys between the mountains, a blink from day to dusk and only seconds from there to moonlight.

Chris pulled up to the front door and left his car in the empty parking lot, hoping the place wasn't deserted. He'd spent a few nights in the car and something about kicking back behind the wheel felt better in his gut than a roof over his head, but his butt had gone numb east of Tucson and his eyes felt sandblasted from staring at the road all day. He paid with his Mastercard and the bland-faced frosted blonde behind the counter didn't even blink at his name. The celebrity of Chris Kirkpatrick had not penetrated deep into the wild, wild west.

He took his room key, walked down a narrow hall, pushed open his door and fell onto the bed. He was asleep before his shoes hit the floor.

When he woke up, his face had the same pattern as the blanket. His mouth was dry as cotton and his feet were cold. The room was dim, cool and shadowed except for a single finger of grey morning light that stabbed through the gap in the curtains into his eyes.

The phone was ringing.

He turned over on his back and looked up at the ceiling. It was made of large white foam tiles, textured to look like rock. On either side of the room a sprinkler tap poked out of the foam like a reverse periscope, peering down into the half-light. Hotel phones always sounded like civil defense sirens. Universal law.

_Mastercard, fuck._ Chris listened to the shrill ring over and over again. _Lance. _

He put his hand on the phone and said, "Lance," but he didn't pick up. He let it ring and listened to it for penance, almost answered it again and again until finally, when the light was stronger and there was nothing pre about the dawn, the ringing stopped.

He scrambled to the phone and grabbed up the receiver, gasping for breath around the frantic thunder of his heart. There was a click and "Lance?" he said, loud in the yawning silence, and pressed the receiver tight against his ear, cradled it in his hands and the crook of his neck. He said "Lance" again and didn't believe the dial tone, didn't recognize his voice or the person using it, the guy with the panic holding onto the phone like a lifeline.

"Justin," he said softly. Chris was as close to home as he was ever going to get again, and it wasn't very close at all. He set the receiver back in its cradle, laid back down, and closed his eyes.

Fingers touched his lips, his eyelids, cool and gentle. "Hey, Chris."

  
   


* * *

  
   


He took I-10 further west, picked up I-5 and drove through LA at 3 am in a fever dream of fumes and lights and music. He felt hands on him, he felt ransacked, naked in the green glow from the dashboard. A warmth against his side, push of fingers through his hair, songs in his ears that didn't come from the radio. He couldn't tell which parts were Justin's memory and which parts were Justin now. Sometimes there were calm blue eyes looking back at him in the rear view mirror. Sometimes there was nothing.

By the time he came out from under the city's orange glow he was trembling, white-knuckled, exhausted. He needed a hotel. He had a thin silver cross on a chain around his neck and he thought he should pray, but he didn't know what he wanted.

  
   


* * *

  
   


_these are strange times_

  
 

   


Fifteen miles from Bakersfield, lost on 99. Turning off I-5 was like stepping off the edge of the world. Small towns with names he couldn't remember once he'd passed them. Dying was the only thing Justin ever did without a spotlight. There was nothing here, just dirt and wind and concrete.

The clerk didn't see him. Chris tried, he waved and tried to get his attention and said "Hello...hello?" into his lined brown face, but the clerk didn't see him until he rang the bell. He charged Chris a hundred dollars for a fifty dollar room, for startling him, and when Chris rolled his eyes, the clerk didn't see that, either. He had to ring the bell again to ask for his key.

He paid with cash and took his room and took a shower. He felt calm but his hands shook, he couldn't hold a razor, couldn't stay still. The water was so hot it left his skin blotched with angry red and he scrubbed until it hurt even more. He thought he would wake up, any time now, any second. But the water poured over him and poured over him and went warm, then less than warm, then cold. He was shivering when he wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped out of the bathroom, water dripping from his hair and the end of his nose and his chin. He saw Justin through wet lashes, wavery-silver and transparent like waves of heat off distant gray pavement.

Chris blinked, looked away for another towel or a shirt or a second for the image to fade. When he looked back, Justin was still there, lounging on the bed. His shoes were off and scattered, his socks were blinding white, he was _smiling_.

Chris pulled on his shirt. He grabbed his jeans and he wasn't going to say anything but every time he looked back, Justin was still there.

"I'm just. I'm going to go and," and he waved the jeans so that the legs flapped in the direction of the bathroom door, and went to the door, and closed it tight behind him.

In the mirror, his hair dripped and his eyes stared back with almost no pupil at all under the glaring fluorescent lights. "Wake up, now," he whispered to his reflection, _wake up, wake up, wake up._ But he didn't. He stood there feeling gone, feeling faded. He put his jeans on and squeezed the water out of his hair and put his hand on the doorknob just as it started to turn

_wake up wake up wakeupwakeup_

and the door opened and Justin was _there_ and he was real and he was solid. His mouth tasted like warm sweet water and his hands felt like love and rest and home.

  
   


* * *

  
   


_the wind would hide our tracks_

  
 

   


Chris had a dream that was him and Justin in the desert. The sky zoomed with clouds to the west and weak, silvery sunlight flickered over cracked, baked dirt. A dust devil spun lazily, drunkenly, just at the horizon, and somewhere he couldn't see there was a dog barking slow and measured, a canine metronome.

Justin sat cross-legged on the ground, hands resting on his knees, palms turned up to the sky. He was the color of the desert, faded gold, except for his eyes. His eyes were the color the sky should've been.

Chris sat down beside Justin. He just sat like a normal guy, leaning back on his hands, legs crossed at the ankle.

Justin smiled. "Hey."

"Hey."

"You remember that time we made Dave stop in that big empty spot near Vegas?"

Chris remembered chasing Justin across what felt like miles of flat, flat, flat. Cracked dirt like they only had in movies about Africa or Arizona. Justin had his hat, or his walkman or something, and laughed like a hyena while he ran. Chris-then thought he was chasing Justin because he wanted his hat back. Chris-now figured he'd chased Justin because Justin ran.

He scooted closer to Justin. He thought he wouldn't feel anything, but Justin radiated heat like he always had. He leaned on Chris like he always had. Chris touched Justin's hair, short and springy under his fingers, soft. He dropped his hand to Justin's shoulder and felt hard muscle beneath his shirt. He left his hand there.

"So."

Justin nodded.

Chris rolled his eyes. "So....?

"It's fifteen miles to Bakersfield. I knew this kid who used to go to high school there. He said he liked it. Only guy I ever knew who said he liked high school."

"You didn't miss anything."

"How's the album doing?"

"Better now." Chris traced a C in the dirt with his thumbnail.

Justin snorted. He flexed his fingers, held them out straight and wide in front of him. His hands were smooth and tan. "Figures."

"Yeah. I liked it better when you just had to take off your shirt." He drew a J, cutting through the top and bottom of the C, and examined his work critically. The J was a little wobbly in the middle.

"You should tell my mom."

Chris stared at Justin. "I didn't even tell my mom. I didn't tell anybody."

Justin sighed. He nodded, and stared off toward nothing in particular. After a few seconds of silence, he closed his eyes and tilted his face up to the sun.

"I'm tired." Chris looked at Justin until Justin dropped his eyes. He touched Justin's arm, just above the elbow: soft and smooth and warm. "Don't leave."

Justin pointed at their initials, joined in the dirt between their legs. "You gonna add some hearts and flowers?"

Chris drew a huge heart around the letters -- anatomically correct, aorta and everything. He'd learned how to do it when Lance was sick. Justin threw his head back and laughed, and Chris rolled his eyes though he wasn't really sure which of them deserved it more. He scrubbed it all out with the heel of his shoe and sighed. "Shut up," he said, and laid his head down on Justin's shoulder.

Justin shut up, even though Chris didn't really want him to. He didn't really want that at all. Quiet was good, though, with Justin's face smushed into his hair and Justin's arm tight around his shoulder.

Chris dreamed the dream all night, the sky and the air and the desert. When he woke up his neck was stiff, and the air conditioner roared and clicked and fed icy air into the room. Justin was like a furnace all along Chris's side. He pressed close and licked at Chris's shoulder and didn't say anything. When Chris shifted, Justin didn't move away.

Chris licked his lips, breath coming short and sharp. He made a fist against Justin's spine, hauled him in closer, said,

"Okay, I'm coming with you. Fuck. Okay, I'm coming, what do I need to do?" He swallowed something back, hard, and put his hand on Justin's neck and tugged him up. "Can I come with you?"

Justin pushed up on his elbows. He loomed over Chris, his eyes glittering in the glow filtered in from the streetlights. "Because you miss me?" he said, low, laughing, and poked Chris in his side. "Because you can't live without me?"

Chris pulled him back down and sighed and held on. "Because I don't particularly want to."

  
   


* * *

  
   


_40,000 men and women every day_

  
 

   


It was happening faster. Outside their hotel room, Chris gave his digital camera and five bucks to a dark-haired guy half-napping between them and the front office, his chair tipped back against the fake pink adobe wall, shades glinting hard in the sun. The guy didn't notice Chris talking to him at first. When he did, he followed them out to the parking lot, listening to Chris intently as he explained how it worked. Justin leaned against Chris's car and posed with his hips forward and his head down, eyes up, mouth shaped around a pout.

Chris rolled his eyes. "You're gonna give JC a woody."

"C always has a woody."

"You're gonna make it worse."

"Am I making it worse for you, sweetie?" Justin grinned and turned glittery, laughing eyes on him, fifteen and twenty and thirty-five all at once.

Chris swallowed, blinked fast and hard and laughed, a quick and breathless laugh that didn't feel like him at all. History, solid and gritty, sweat spots at his underarms and day old stubble on his chin. Chris let the car take his weight and breathed in some of the scorching, dusty air. He slouched next to Justin on the car and grabbed his hand. Held on tight. "Take the damn picture," he grunted at their guy.

Their guy said, "¿Qué?"

So Chris sighed and went through it all again, this time demonstrating and letting him try it out a few times just to make sure he got it right. When he got back to the car Justin had lost interest in the photo shoot and was picking lint off his shirt.

"This didn't used to get stuff on it."

"It didn't used to sleep on the floor by my bed."

The guy took their picture. He did it wrong the first three times, because the camera was a gift from Justin and Justin knew fuck-all about digital cameras; he just got the most expensive thing with the most dials and switches. By the fourth time, though, he had it, and there they were, arms flung over each other's shoulders, hip to hip, grinning like idiots. Chris took the camera back without letting go of Justin, said, "Gracias, muchas gracias" and leaned his head on Justin's shoulder to watch the guy walk back to his chair, lean back against the wall, go back to sleep. He was gonna tip over, doing that someday.

"Where the fuck are we getting this thing printed?" Chris said, closing his eyes.

"Leave the camera at the desk. Lance will figure it out."

"This camera would never be seen or heard from again, dude. Let's just mail it to him."

"Whatever, man." Justin shrugged. "Let's just go."

"Think they'll see us?"

Justin squeezed his shoulder and didn't say anything. Chris pretended he didn't know what it meant. They drove to the post office just over the speed limit and Chris watched the lady behind the counter look through him before looking at him. The room was empty except for them. She never looked at Justin at all. Chris took his receipt, thanked her, and turned to leave.

He didn't. He bought a stamped postcard with a picture of a cliff on it, blue sky behind, and addressed it quickly to his mother. His handwriting looked strange and spidery and thin. He wrote fast, "Love you always. Chris", and thought he was done. He looked up at Justin, at Justin looking at him out of sad eyes that looked like second thoughts.

Underneath his name, in parentheses, he wrote, (_This is the right thing_.) He showed it to Justin, and dropped it in the out-of-town mail slot. When Chris looked back again, Justin smiled.

It was two miles back to the hotel. Chris drove it fast. They packed their stuff, straightened the room, and stowed everything in the car.

Chris tried to check out, but the desk clerk never saw them.

  
   


* * *

  
   


_really find happiness_

  
 

   


Chris didn't even know why they were driving. Cars flashed by them and tried to flash through them and Chris nearly ran the car off the road a couple of times. He would have thought it was dangerous, but he didn't think anything real could touch them now. They were completely alone.

_Impact, a scream of tortured metal. Impact. _

The air was so bright Chris could see it, sparks in it, a glow getting brighter with every mile. The car had been running on empty since Bakersfield. The needle on the speedometer was buried; Chris had no idea how fast they were going now. The landscape was a long colorless blur outside the windows and ahead there was nothing but road fading to bright, shining white.

_Silence. _

"Get your feet off my dash."

"Dude, what possible damage could I do to your dash in my condition?"

"I know you, Justin. You're either a hallucination, in which case I may be crazy but I got a great head for details, or you're a ghost, in which case you may be dead but you're still Justin. Either way, you're scuffing up my dash. Get 'em off. You're probably dripping ectoplasm all over the vinyl."

_Beads of safety glass falling from the sky like rain, sparkling like diamond in the sun. _

Justin reached down and linked their hands, palm to palm, fingers threaded together. Chris had only one hand free. He took that hand off the wheel.

"Justin? Is this how it happens?"

Justin squeezed tighter. He looked at Chris with eyes that told him nothing, for one second terrifyingly empty until Chris blinked. He put his hand back on the wheel.

"This better not hurt," he muttered, filled with the conviction that it would.

_Sirens, somewhere, sirens, but not close enough, a pressure in his chest and a trickle of blood down his cheek. Wrong, wrong, wrong. He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. _

Justin pulled Chris to him, kissed his mouth, lips and tongue sweet. Wet. When Chris opened his eyes again his free hand was on Justin's face, and Justin's eyes were bright like the air and he was smiling, warm and sweet. "Don't be afraid, Chris."

_Sweat ran into his eyes, it was so hot, fiery bright and hot. Seconds ticked by, and he heard voices, voices from outside, too far away. Another second. Another. Another. He listened, and the voices faded. _

Chris pulled Justin's hand to his chest and held it there.

_The sky faded. _

He kept his eyes on the road.

_The heat faded. _

He kept his foot on the gas.

_There was nothing but this: wind, road, dust. And the low, lazy hiss of  
static on the radio, lost between stations. _

"Is this how it happened?"

  
   


* * *

  
   


_This is how it happens:_

Chris has been gone since midsummer, JC since early in the fall. Joey stopped talking about them when the postcards stopped coming, and then stopped talking about anything at all. Lance has tried to call Joey, off and on, since the weekend.

Joey never answers. His car isn't in his driveway, and hasn't been for days.

Lance hasn't started driving yet, but he has a map. He has a full tank of gas. He has an impossible picture of Chris and Justin and all the postcards and a restlessness, bone-deep, itching under his skin. His oil has been changed and his tires checked and he's called his mother, to make sure she knows he loves her.

He wakes up one night under the stars, fully dressed, with his hand on the hood of his car. There's a silver-blue light laid bright on the concrete and the lawn. The sky is getting light in the east and he turns away from it and walks back into his house.

He stretches out on his bed above the covers and looks at the ceiling, branch-shadows trailing over it with the wind. He can't hear it; some days, he can't hear anything. There's a silence in Lance's mind that was never there before, but he hears familiar voices in the static between radio stations, incomplete harmonies for songs he feels like he should know. Lance hasn't started driving, not yet.

But he thinks it won't be long.

  
   


* * *

  
   


_don't be afraid_

don't be afraid

don't be afraid

don't be afraid  


  
 

   



End file.
